We packed up early and headed east to Yosemite National Park first thing Thursday morning. It was another picture perfect California day - highs in the 70's and not a cloud in the sky! We raced past the westbound traffic heading into the city (all those suckers with day jobs!) and eventually hit the rolling hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We got to the park just after noon and drove the valley loop to gasp at the enormous granite walls of El Capitan and Ha...

So we finally finished up our work and took off to San Francisco on Friday, May 31st. It was a long drive up through the central valley and we finally arrived at our friends' Dan & Linda's just before midnight. They live in the cool little area of Rockridge, an Oakland neighborhood just across the boarder from Berkley. Our initial plan was to have a relaxing stay in the city before our various treks into the wild, but as it turned out a bunch of our friends p...

So we're packed up and all ready to go! We're staying in Pasadena for the weekend for a friend's wedding then finishing off some last minute work and it's Arctic Circle or Bust time! A three month journey from Southern California to Northern Alaska and back. Our plan is to drive up the coast (more or less) until the road ends in British Columbia, Canada, then ferry our way up to Alaska. Aili has a conference in Anchorage in late July, after that, it's a return tr...

Since we missed the bus to Capadoccia, we decided to sleep in a bit and show Aili and Gisela the town (since they were in the conference the whole time. We took a local bus down to the city center and wandered around the clock tower before diving into the maze of streets looking for the old bazaar. Finally, we found it and split up to do some window shopping and stopping for tea on the picturesque second floor. That night Aili and I set out for a nice dinner for ...

Day two of the conference included more police escorts around town and a ferry across the bay to another more modern shopping district. I skipped out on the afternoon tour to watch Aili and Gisela's presentation which went over really well. The next day we woke up ready for the trip to Ephesus - the ancient city first founded in 300 B.C. Many of the ruins from the Roman era still exist (most dating from around 100 A.D.) but people have been living in this area si...